Structure characterization and surface morphology of low sintering temperature synthesized calcium titanate ceramics

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of calcination temperature on the structure and surface morphology of calcium titanate (CaTiO3) ceramics. The structure and composition of pre-sintered CaTiO3 powder and sintered CaTiO3 ceramic samples were analyzed by x-ray diffraction (XRD). The crystallite size of the samples was also analyzed by XRD. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to analyze the surface morphology of the samples. The chemical compositions were determined by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The density of ceramic samples was measured by Archimedes’ method. XRD analysis shows that calcium carbonate (CaCO3) starts to react with titanium dioxide (TiO2) at temperature of 600°C and the size of CaTiO3 crystallite increases with the increase of calcination temperature. The micrograph images from SEM show that elongated particles are present in the pre-sintered powder samples. They are identified by EDX as CaCO3 particles, which shrunk in size as the calcination temperature increases. Besides, pores that contribute to the reduction in density are also observed in the micrograph images of sintered ceramic samples from SEM. The percentage density of sintered ceramic samples increases from 83.6% to 85.0% with the increasing of the pre-sintering temperature.